There are still a few more moves to come (can the Warriors figure out Jonathan Kuminga and sign Al Horford already?), but for the most part, the 2025 NBA offseason has entered the dead zone — which is to say the time when we all spend the next few months cooking up mock LeBron trades.
We’ve taken a look back at the offseason in several ways. Sam Quinn graded every West and East team. Free agent winners and losers are here. Now I want to go a level below even the general losers of the summer and examine five deals that struck me and many other people as particularly poor.
Let’s get to it. The five worst moves of the 2025 NBA offseason.
1. Bucks ditch Dame for Turner
Give Jon Horst this much: He’s gonna go down swinging. Every time even a tiny whiff of Giannis Antetokounmpo possibly starting to consider a Milwaukee exit — whether or not there’s been any merit to the speculation is another matter — has hit the air, Horst has snapped into action with a blockbuster move aimed at restoking the loyalty of the best player to wear a Bucks uniform since Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
It began with the trade for Jrue Holiday in 2020, which, in terms of draft capital, cost the Bucks three first-round picks and two first-round swaps and resulted in an immediate championship. Kudos.
Then came the deal for Damian Lillard in 2023, which cost the Bucks their 2029 first-round pick, Holiday and two more unprotected first-round swaps. This was a bigger gamble, but still justifiable. Milwaukee was swapping out Holiday’s all-world defense for Lillard’s all-world offense — with the reasoning, presumably, being that the former could be somewhat covered for by committee while the latter was filling a glaring half-court hole.
It never fully worked. Lillard and Antetokounmpo never became the unstoppable pick-and-roll partnership that their on-paper skillsets suggested they would be, and Lillard was never going to be maximized off the ball. Injuries prevented the duo from ever really getting a fair postseason shake, but nonetheless, the Bucks flamed out and the Giannis rumors fired back up this summer.
This is where things went haywire. If the Holiday move was daring, and the Lillard trade was starting to signal something more desperate, then this Myles Turner acquisition can only be classified as downright delusional.
By now, you likely know the deal: To open up the money to pay Turner $107 million over the next four years, the Bucks signed up to pay Lillard $113 million over the next five years TO NOT PLAY FOR THEM. This is what the league refers to as a waive-and-stretch, turning the two remaining years of Lillard’s current contract into $22.5 million annual payments for the next half decade.
In the real world, this is “buying” the car you can’t really afford by manipulating the math on the loan docs. At worst, it’s a recipe for repossession as the interest keeps running. At best, you’re car poor, and it’s not even a luxury car. Turner is good and perfectly suited to play next to Giannis, but he’s no Lamborghini. He’s a Volvo. He’s middle-class modernization parked in the garage of a house on fire.
In an interview with Eric Nehm of The Athletic, Horst explained the decision to waive-and-stretch Lillard, who is likely out for all of next season after tearing his Achilles in the playoffs, and sign Turner like this:
“I think every decision, every move that you make, has risk and reward, so there’s nothing unique about that in this case,” Horst told Nehm. “We looked at the opportunity to acquire a highly productive, elite free agent, who is in the prime of his career, and who is an incredible fit next to Giannis, as an opportunity for these next two seasons in particular, instead of what would have been Dame on our books at a full salary, as really opportunistic, more than anything.
“The carry for the following three years, there’s no question that if you want to call it an impediment or another hurdle, that’s fine,” Horst said. “But we were dealing with a really big hurdle and complication that we had to figure out how to deal with now, and the now matters more than anything.
“… Maximizing Giannis’ prime, our opportunities to win — I feel like that’s our responsibility always,” Horst went on to say. “So it was really a now versus future decision.
“That being said, Myles is an incredible player in the prime of his career for four years. So four of those five years [that the Bucks are paying Lillard], we have Myles Turner, so it wasn’t like we just did something now and then we have to take four years of risk beyond this year and four years of carry without any production. We have four years, at least, of Myles Turner at elite production while that’s on our books. And there [are] other things that we did, there [are] other moves that we made, other players we’re able to acquire because of this move now that I believe will outweigh the carry of the 20-plus million dollars [per year] that we have [on the books for Lillard].”
This is a long way of saying: “I know this is going to be a crippling move down the road, but losing Giannis right now would be even worse.” Which may be a fair assessment if you subscribe to the “when you have a Giannis-type superstar, you have an organizational obligation to pay whatever price it takes to keep them in contention” school of thought. Still, the problem is that Turner doesn’t put Milwaukee in contention.
You can sing all the “East is wide-open” songs you like, but there are at least four teams and probably more who are considerably better than the Bucks. Cleveland, New York, Orlando, (healthy) Philadelphia and the Hawks are a clear tier above. Detroit is probably better, but even if you want to argue Milwaukee could beat the Pistons in a playoff series, that’s the level we’re talking about. Milwaukee is with the Heat. Maybe the Celtics for one season, but as soon as Jayson Tatum comes back, Milwaukee falls well behind Boston, too. Same when Haliburton gets back for Indiana.
It’s true, the East is open for business if you’re a really good team, but the Bucks are not that. Don’t let the Pacers’ run fool you into thinking anyone can pull that off. That wasn’t some “The East is weak” situation. The Pacers were damn good. They were WAY better than the Bucks, as currently constructed, could even dream of being.
The Bucks are playing for a 4-6 seed, at best, and maybe they can win a playoff series if all goes well. Same as last year. And for that, they signed up for $22.5 million in dead money on their books for the next half decade in this new second-apron world that has teams pinching every penny they can find in their couch cushions.
Again, Horst does deserve some credit, I suppose, for taking the swing that most teams never would. But in this case, there’s a reason nobody else would’ve taken this swing. Because it’s almost certain to be a miss.
2. Suns bounce Beal for … who?
If the Bucks paying Lillard $113 million to go play for someone else (the Blazers, it turns out) was a questionable move, at least you can argue they got Turner out of the deal. The Suns are paying Bradley Beal $100 million over the next five years to go play for the Clippers, and they didn’t even get anyone directly back. This is a purely financial move (and the roster agility that comes with lowering the payroll below the second apron).
Now, the savings the Suns will enjoy as a result of booting Beal are admittedly massive. In taxes alone, they are cutting $175 million off their bill for this season, per ESPN. Throw in Beal’s pre-waive salary, and they are saving well north of $200 million. And again, that’s just this season.
Now, what’s another $200 million for an owner as rich as Matt Ishbia, who shelled out almost $700 million over the past two seasons in luxury tax payments alone, all for the team to win exactly zero playoff games? Well, it’s $200 million. I don’t care how much money you have. Two hundred mil is two hundred mil.
But suppose you’re not in the business of celebrating the savings of multi-billionaires. In that case, there is also, as mentioned, the significant roster-building relief that comes with dropping below that second apron. Hey, they can aggregate a few salaries in a trade! Get pumped, Phoenix!
The problem is, what do they have to trade that anyone wants? They blew every first-round draft pick between now and 2031 to build to put this mess together in the first place. Now, Kevin Durant and Beal are gone, and yet the Suns still extended Devin Booker for two more years at $145 million, on top of the three years and $171 million remaining on his current contract.
Why are you paying a player like that when you are clearly, whether you can admit it to yourself or not, entering a rebuild? Even if you want to think of Booker as a potential trade asset down the road, moving money like that is a monumental task. The Suns are spiraling.
But that’s a bigger story of which this Beal situation is only a part. But it’s not a small part. The trade for Beal was a fantasy move in the first place, and it very quickly turned into a nightmare. They got out of it, by at least some measure, and saved some money. But from a basketball standpoint, paying a player almost $100 million to leave without directly acquiring anyone in return is the exclamation point on a very sad Suns story.
3. Pelicans take wild Queen swing
New Orleans trading up from the No. 23 pick to the No. 13 pick to draft Derik Queen wasn’t crazy. Queen is an extremely skilled big man to land at the back end of the lottery (even if he doesn’t fit terribly well alongside Zion Williamson as a non-shooter at this point). The price the Pelicans paid is the problem.
To draft Queen, New Orleans sent its unprotected 2026 first-round pick to the Hawks, which has a chance to be a very valuable pick. It’s actually the better pick between New Orleans and Milwaukee. Keep in mind, New Orleans won 21 games last season and the Bucks are a Giannis injury or trade request away from being in the lottery. It’s crazy that the Pelicans didn’t at least put any protections on that pick.
Maybe top-five protected? There’s almost no chance the Hawks still wouldn’t have done that deal with that qualifier, and the Pelicans still then would’ve had a chance to retain a high pick in what is projected to be an awesome class if things go south for either them or the Bucks, which, again, is a distinct possibility.
Perhaps Queen will turn out to be a superstar. If that’s the case, he’ll be worth this price. But that’s a hell of a gamble to take on a guy that some mocks had going outside the lottery to begin with. It’s not the only thing the Pelicans did this summer that left us NBA pundits scratching our collective heads. Which brings us to …
4. Pelicans drown themselves in Poole
Before the draft, the Pelicans, which is to say Joe Dumars and Troy Weaver, traded CJ McCollum and Kelly Olynyk to the Wizards for Jordan Poole, Saddiq Bey and the 40th pick. On the face of it, it’s not awful. Poole is a similar player to McCollum at this point, only younger, and there’s perhaps some upside on Bey (who tore his ACL in March of 2024) as 3-and-D support for Zion.
One small issue: the contracts of McCollum and Olynyk are set to expire after this season, while Poole and Bey are on the books for north of $40 million in 2026-27. There’s a reason the Wizards got rid of Poole at basically their first opportunity. He put up pretty good and efficient numbers last season, but he’s not as impactful for actually winning games as McCollum and now you’re tied to him for an extra year.
The Pelicans should be looking to clean up their books, not clog them with good-stat-bad-team guys. Sorry, but the Pelicans are not the Warriors. They’re not going to pull a championship contributor out of Poole. This was a strange move, to say the least.
5. Blazers take very expensive Holiday
It’s hard to fully know any team that brings in Holiday, who has helped bring a championship to the last two teams that have done so. But the Blazers are not competing for a championship. They’re obviously pretty high on themselves after a strong second half, but let’s not make a 36-46 record out to be something more than it is in a Western Conference full of behemoths.
The Blazers are very deep and have a lot of good young players. They can feasibly compete for a play-in spot. Holiday, though a declining player, will help with that cause on remaining ability, to say nothing of his value as a mentor for Scoot Henderson and Shaedon Sharpe.
But now Portland has brought back Damian Lillard, and you have to wonder if they would have made the move for Holiday if they knew Lillard was going to be available to play mentor to Scoot and Shaedon. Sure, Holiday is actually going to play this season, and there’s a lot more value in the whispering wisdom of a guy who’s on the court and the airplanes with you, but is that worth paying Holiday more than $100 million over the next three seasons to finish, if you’re lucky, in the play-in?
Again, you can’t go too hard on a team that signs Holiday. This guy is organizational gold. But he’s also 35 years old. He’ll be 38 in 2027-28, when the Blazers will have $87 million committed to Holiday, Lillard and Jerami Grant with Henderson, Sharpe and Toumani Camara all into their next deals at market rate. That’s just too expensive for mentorship. The only way this is worth it is if the Blazers become a playoff team, and I don’t see that happening in this Western Conference with those contracts, which aren’t exactly tradeable until they are in expiring years, effectively clogging their books.